February Lover

by Rebecca Royce

  “I don’t know if I should knock, see if the door is open, or ring the doorbell.” His words were spoken in a monotone voice.

  “Tricky, isn’t it?” Stacey maintained such a close relationship with her parents. She couldn’t imagine not opening the door to their house and walking on in whenever the mood struck her.

  “This was a mistake. I should never have come back here.” He sighed. “I’d moved on. And now I’m acting like I’m twenty years old and about to explode from needing to get out of here.”

  “I never knew you felt that way. Not until the day you left.”

  He threw his hands in the air. “For years I’d done a really good job of hiding it.”

  “Right.” This moment couldn’t be about her and wondering why he couldn’t have let her in a little on his feelings. “Here’s the thing, Red. Everyone from New Orleans eventually comes back here. I left and here I am living here again.”

  “I’m not living here again. I’m visiting. By March I’ll be somewhere else.”

  So she had a very short amount of time to convince him to pose for her and to get his face out of her mind so she never needed to think of it again. “Fair enough. Tell yourself you had to come back sometime and get it out of your system.”

  “Okay.” He laughed. “You must really think I’m pathetic.”

  “I don’t.” She moved forward. “Just indecisive, which is why I had to ask you out when I was fifteen. Move.”

  Stacey nudged him out of the way with her hip. Using the knocker, she banged loudly on the door. Then she grabbed the knob. It turned, and she pushed it open. “Your mother should not be leaving her door unlocked. Foolish woman. This town is loaded with criminals.”

  “She never could manage the simple things.” He sounded better, easier, which made Stacey’s soul feel lighter.

  “Hello, Miss Linda. We’re here. I’ve got your boy. Picked him right off the street.”

  “Your accent. You really put it on sometimes, and then other times it’s like you have none at all.”

  “Aidan, once upon a time I loved when you noticed me so completely. Today? I’m not going to explain to you all of the eccentricities of being me. There are too many to name.”

  He laughed, and she smiled at him. Apparently, all he needed was for her to open the door for him in order to cheer him up.

  “Miss Linda?” she called again. “I hear water running upstairs. She must be in the shower.”

  “She got in the shower and left her door open?” He threw his hands in the air and stepped into the house. “Like I said, no common sense. Mom?” he called up the stairs.

  “Do you need me to stay? Because I can go, if you’d prefer.” Her heart fluttered and she knew she should flee. No way, no how could she fall for Doctor Aidan Roux. He’d been impossible to resist even before they’d added the MD to his name.

  “No, stay.” He took her hand and brought her to him. “At least until you can say hello to Mom.”

  His mouth came down on hers. She gasped at the unexpected embrace and then closed her eyes. Aidan tasted like mint. Her mind flip-flopped and he deepened the kiss, pulling her to him by the back of her neck.

  “Aidan?” his mother called down the stairs.

  Stacey pulled back from him, hitting the wall behind her. Her heart raced. “I’m sorry, Aidan. I’m suddenly remembering an appointment. Tell your mom I say hello for me, won’t you? And think about the picture.”

  She fled out the door, knowing she had no other choice. The past was in there, and it couldn’t have a place in her future.

  Chapter Two

  Aidan took a sip of his Abita beer and longed for a cigarette. Oh, he would never smoke one. But the last time he’d drunk Abita, he had. Of course, he’d been drinking illegally back then. Not that anyone cared about drinking laws in New Orleans.

  Laissez les bons temps rouler.

  His mother approached him, coming up on his right side. She’d aged since he’d last seen her, but other than the few wrinkles, he couldn’t find one way the woman had altered at all. She could still hostess a party like no one’s business, still tell everyone around her what to do and make it sound so genteel they didn’t care she was being invasive, and with her every look and deed, she could still make him feel guilty for not being a perfect son.

  But at least he didn’t have his drunken father beating on him to make it worse.

  Stacey laughed at something Rob Steiner said, and he resisted the urge to punch the guy out. What had taken over his brain? Actually, he didn’t have to think too hard to figure it out. His brain should have been in charge but his cock had other ideas. But ever since he’d kissed her, he’d hardly been able to think of anything else.

  “Having fun, darling?” His mother’s voice killed his sex drive, and he turned back to look at her.

  “No.” He took another sip of his beer. “When I agreed to come home, it wasn’t to be paraded around like a prize to show off to your friends.”

  “What a thing to say to your mother.” She huffed. “I’m not parading you around. I simply want everyone to see how good you are doing. And I invited your friends over, too. Why aren’t you talking to them?”

  He had spoken to them when they’d all arrived, except for Stacey, who’d scooted by him with a quick hi before making her way to the back yard. And he wasn’t fooled by his mom’s nice words. She wanted her friends to see how well he’d turned out so they could all get over what had happened fifteen years ago, so they could all finally decide to accept her completely back into her mix.

  He owed her enough to play this game for her, for a little while anyway.

  “I talked to my friends.”

  They weren’t really his friends anymore. Other than Stacey, who had been so much more than friends to him, he’d barely liked any of them. They were lawyers, businessmen, politicians, and parents.

  “You’re standing by yourself.” Her words were said through gritted teeth.

  “I’m aware of that.” He took a deep breath to stop himself from saying something nasty. Just then, Stacey approached. She had the most impeccable bail-out timing of anyone he’d ever known.

  “Hello, Miss Linda. This is such a lovely party. The crawfish are so in season.”

  “Yes. Stacey, dear, you look lovely.” Unlike his father, his mother had adored Stacey, one of the reasons he could forgive her for some of the other things that had happened during those years.

  “Thank you.” She smiled back warmly. “You look well. I swear you never age. I was just saying that to my mother the other day. ‘Miss Linda never ages.’”

  “Oh, you.” His mother patted Stacey on the shoulder, and Aidan took a deep pull from his drink. Why couldn’t he people please? Where was his innate ability to know what to say? He did it with his patients. Why not his own mother?

  “It’s very nice of you to say so.” His mother sighed. “Because I’m afraid I’m not feeling very well.”

  “You’re not?” Stacey and Aidan asked at the same time. With her words in his head, Aidan set down his drink to look at his mother.

  “I have to have this minor heart surgery. I guess I’ve got a blockage.” She shrugged and started to move away from them. Stacey grabbed her arm, and his mind whirled as he quickly assessed what he could tell of her ailments by looking at her. Why hadn’t he thought to do this earlier?

  Her respiration was fast, and her color had a tinge of gray. His mother didn’t look healthy, and he hadn’t even noticed. What the fuck was wrong with him?

  “Maybe you’d better tell us more about this blockage.” She gestured to Aidan. “He’s a doctor. I’m sure he’ll be able to understand.”

  Stacey ushered his mother to a chair and sat down next to her. He listened intently while his mother described having to undergo open-heart surgery. Her years living with a smoker, his father, coupled with her really horrific eating habits, had caught up with her. At sixty-five years old, she had to have a blockage removed in the most invasive
way possible.

  Aidan withdrew into himself, a trick proven to be beneficial on the battlefield. How did he feel about what his mother said? He wanted to feel something, anything, about the fact the woman who had given him life had to have this massive operation. But all he could do was focus on the manipulation of the thing. Not only had she wanted him to come back in order to perform social reparations for him but also to take care of her because she had to have heart surgery.

  All of that would have been fine if she’d come out and told him what she needed instead of playing through some kind of drama about missing him.

  “When is the surgery, Mom?”

  He’d interrupted her storytelling, and both her and Stacey’s looks told him he’d barely risen above the rank of ape in terms of manners. But when he wanted answers, he was going to get them. Screw the dictates of Uptown nonsense.

  “Next week, son. The day after you leave.”

  “Oh really?” Aidan tapped his foot on the ground. He’d learned, over the years, to watch for his physical indicators showing emotional distress. Thanks to his father, he had virtually no knowledge of his own feelings until they hit him over the head. Except when he’d been with Stacey.

  “Who do you have to take care of you, Mom?” Which one of her so-called friends would put themselves out to help her after such an ordeal?

  “I’ve hired a nighttime nurse. I like her very much, but I can’t find anyone I like for the daytime. I’ll have to make do.”

  “You’ll have to make do?” he hollered and the crowd around them stopped talking.

  “Come visit for a week in February,” she’d said.

  Biting down on his tongue, he knew the queen herself had just manipulated him.

  So help me, I am not going to get stuck here for the rest of my life.

  ***

  How could a whole week have passed since the party? He sipped his ginger ale and looked out the window. So this was what patients’ families felt like waiting for word from him. Of course, his patients’ families usually had no idea their loved ones had been injured until after he’d finished with them.

  He pressed his head against the window. The walkway that led from the hospital to the medical offices so patrons didn’t have to go out onto the street, glittered with the light drops of rain hitting the sides. It matched his mood perfectly. Looking down, he checked his watch. Five minutes had passed. Seven more hours to go.

  When had he gotten so nervous about this?

  “I brought you some food.” He jumped, turning around to regard the person talking. It took him less than a second to realize it was Stacey in front of him. His heart flipped.

  “What are you doing here?”

  She shrugged. “Did you think I’d leave you here by yourself?”

  “I didn’t expect you.”

  Stacey held up a box. “Doughnuts.”

  He laughed, covering his mouth due to the shock of hearing the sound come out of him. “Stacey, my mother is in there having double-bypass open-heart surgery because she eats like crap.”

  “Right, and your father died because he smoked two packs a day.” She moved forward until she reached the seats. They were alone in the waiting room for the moment. “But if you had one cigarette today, it wouldn’t give you lung cancer, and since I suspect you never eat these things and neither do I, since they go right on my ass, one of these doughnuts won’t kill either of us.”

  He turned until he could get a really good view of that part of her anatomy. His cock twitched in response. She had a heart-shaped rear end. Whatever she did or did not eat, it worked for her.

  “You checked out my ass.” She put the doughnuts down on the chair adjacent to her.

  Aidan grinned. “I did.”

  “And?” She sighed loudly. “Never mind. Don’t tell me. I can’t hear what you think of my ass.”

  He walked toward her and sat down next to her. “Hand me one of those puppies.” She opened the box and rather than giving him a doughnut, let him pick from the variety. Jelly had always been his favorite. Before he took a bite, he stared at her. “How many did you think we would have each? Six?”

  “No.” She took her own doughnut and slammed the box shut with a whack. “I thought you could give the rest to the nurses on your mother’s floor. Bribe them into treating her with extra love and care.”

  “Do people often bring food to the nurses?”

  Stacey leaned back in her chair. “Yes, Red, they do.”

  “Huh.” He chewed, closing his eyes at the sensation of the jelly sliding down his throat. When he’d finished his bite, he eyed Stacey eating hers. She seemed to be having the same kind of experience with her powdered-sugar endeavor. Before he could think about it too much, he rubbed a bit of the white remnants off her chin.

  “How do you know I don’t eat these regularly?”

  “Because you’re built like a god.” She groaned. “I did not say that out loud.”

  “Ah, but you did.” She thought he was built like a god? He shifted in his seat as an announcement came over the speaker for a cleanup crew needed on the third floor. What was he doing flirting with her in the hospital while his mother might be dying on a table?

  His mother, whom he had all but ignored for fifteen years except for a monthly letter, and eventually, e-mail. And here he sat with Stacey, who had the misfortune of being the only woman he’d ever treated worse than he did his own mother.

  “You went into your own head, where I don’t think you found happy things awaiting you.”

  “Yeah.” He wanted her. Desired her with an urgency he couldn’t deny. His mother might be dead on a table. Yet all he could focus on involved getting Stacey Castle naked.

  “Is it Afghanistan? Does it haunt you?”

  He grabbed a second doughnut from the box. If only she knew the true direction of his thoughts. She thought he remembered the war when in fact he wondered if she still made a high-pitched sigh after she came. “Are you asking me if I have PTSD?”

  “I was trying to see if I could help. I don’t want to intrude.”

  He patted her on the knee for no other reason than he got to touch her. “You’re fine. No, I’m not suffering. The things I went through, they were mostly medical. Other than the incident with the children where I found myself in very odd circumstances, I didn’t do much work outside the hospitals. The type of injury was horrific, and I felt terrible for my patient. I’m not a hero.”

  “Yes, you did.” She took the doughnut box from him and moved it away. “When you said you wouldn’t do my photo.”

  “I’m not a hero.”

  “I think all of those children would disagree with you.”

  The way she moved, did she know each time she so much as breathed he couldn’t stop staring at the sleekness of her long limbs? And her breasts….

  “Stacey.” She’d probably hate him after this. She should already, and he really didn’t know why she didn’t. “I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s like I’m obsessed.”

  “Okay.” She laughed. “Thinking about what?”

  “You and me, in bed. Taking you, over and over. Making you come until you can’t remember any men you’ve ever been with except me.”

  She stayed silent, but she didn’t turn from him. Her silence let him keep going. “I’m not going to be here past February. Mom should be okay to have a nurse by then. If she can’t decide on one, I’ll pick for her. This would have to be temporary in every way. But if you wanted it, we could be together for February. I can promise you it would be so hot you wouldn’t regret it. Ever.”

  ***

  Stacey knew she should be horribly offended. He’d propositioned her to have sex for the rest of the month and then go their separate ways. But the truth was, the second he’d started talking she’d become so hot inside she could barely breathe.

  There was no way to go back in time and fix things between them. No way she would ever find out exactly why he’d left, if there was something she co
uld have done to make him happier. She wasn’t exactly certain she wanted to. When she’d told him his leaving had prompted her to go make her own career, her own life, she’d meant it.

  But today he offered passion. They’d been kids together. She’d given him his first kiss. For all intents and purposes, it might as well have been hers. A sloppy kiss-and-run at twelve years old shouldn’t get to count. They’d lost their virginity together, and all of her early sexual education had been found in his arms.

  What would they be like now?

  She sucked in her breath. “You’re a hard man to say no to.”

  “You didn’t say yes.” He took her hands in his. “I need a yes. I can’t leave here with you upset again. I won’t hurt you again. So, you have to tell me you understand what I’m offering and what I’m not, that you grasp completely I’m not going to be here in March.”

  “I’m not a moron, thank you.” She stood up. “And I’m not the head-over-heels-in-love-with-you twenty-year-old with dreams of marriage and Sunday crawfish boils wrecking my brain. I have my own life here. I’m trying to decide if it’s worth disrupting it for you for an entire month of my life.”

  She felt him when he moved behind her, his warmth filling her from the outside in. With a quick tug, he pulled her flush against his body. “I can promise you. It’ll be worth it.”

  She sucked in her breath. Holy God, the man could make her excited with only his words. She shivered in his arms.

  The sound of heels clicking in the hall echoed in the room. Stacey separated from him. She walked to the chairs and picked up her bag. Clearing her throat, she tried to regain her composure. They were in a hospital. His mother had probably been hooked up to a bypass machine somewhere down the hall. Behind every closed door, sick people fought for their lives.

  All serving to remind her how precious and short life could really be. However, that didn’t mean she had to be completely disrespectful and grope her ex-boyfriend in public.